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No Fees if there is No Recovery

We represent our personal injury clients on a “Contingency Fee” basis. That means, there are no fees if there is no recovery.

Rather than receiving an hourly fee, as many attorneys do, we are paid on a contingency fee. A contingency fee is a fee that is not paid until there is a monetary recovery for your damages. The amount of the fee is a percentage of the award.

This means that you do not owe us any attorney fees unless and until we settle your case or obtain a verdict for you.

In short, we do not get paid our fee or reimbursed for our costs until your case is resolved.

Advantage of Contingency Fee

The primary advantage of the contingency fee is that it makes legal representation available to everyone, even people who otherwise could not afford an attorney. A person can file a lawsuit without providing any money up front to an attorney. This is especially important when someone has suffered a serious injury and cannot work, let alone pay for all their legal bills. This is also usually advantageous for people with soft tissue injuries because the (generally) lower settlement amount makes hiring an hourly lawyer too expensive.

Financial Risk for the Attorney with a Contingency Fee

Obviously the risk involved for the attorney is that if the injured person does not recover any money, the attorney does not get paid for the work he put into the preparing the lawsuit and negotiating or going to trial.

In a business sense, we partner with you and your case. Because of that, we do tend to be a bit more selective about what cases we take on. Despite what tort-reform myth-makers would have you believe, attorneys that work on a contingency basis do not take on cases they regard as frivolous because they only get paid when the case settles or a jury makes an award – a frivolous case is more likely to not settle and more likely to lose at trial.

Since we are also putting our money up to order police reports, 911 calls, medical records, pay for the cost of filing suit, depositions, expert fees, etc we have to seriously evaluate the merits of the potential case.

In other words, we only take on cases where someone has been injured and seen a doctor about it. However, we never choose our clients based on the pay day their case promises. We pride ourselves on being advocates for any injured people in the community that we truly believe we can help. Additionally, we never encourage a client to go to trial unless it is absolutely necessary. A personal injury attorney collects a larger fee when a case goes to trial, but that means the client gets less money, generally has to wait much longer for their check, and must go through the stressful court process. On the flip side, insurance companies are very stingy and often make unreasonably low offers, so you should be prepared mentally to file suit if it comes to it.

Generally Used Calculation Details for Contingency Fee Cases

The percentage of the fee is taken from the total award, then the expenses advanced by the attorney are recovered, then any liens owed by the client to medical providers, health insurance companies, government agencies, etc. are subtracted. What is left goes to the client. That amount will vary greatly from case to case depending on the amount of the settlement or judgment and liens on the client. The attorneys’ contingency fee is set in contract and expenses are usually predictable.